


Home

by bluesunflower44



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29487864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesunflower44/pseuds/bluesunflower44
Summary: After the Hundred Years' War, where is Katara needed? Who is she supposed to be? Where is her home? Currently a one-shot but will most likely be expanded into a Zutara story.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender or anything else you recognize.

She jerked awake, gasping and clutching at phantoms, with tears she didn't remember shedding running down her face. The absence of moonlight reminded her that it would be 15 days until she would have a night free of nightmares and she shook her head as if to clear her mind of the haunting visions. Realizing that sleep would not keep her company tonight, she unsteadily walked to her balcony and braced herself against the cold railing. Her lips parted slightly as she inhaled the scent of seawater, the only thing that smelled like home. _Home_.

Where was that; what was that? She hadn't truly had a home for 5 years, since she left the Southern Water Tribe. Ran was more accurate - she had ran away in the middle of the night, with nothing but the Spirit's Lights to guide her way. After spending a year helping her tribe rebuild and recover from the Hundred Years' War, she had seen that there was no place for her at the South Pole anymore. She couldn't stand to be surrounded by waterbenders from the Northern Water Tribe who had too many opinions on her lifestyle, and she felt suffocated by all the people who expected her to nurture them just because it was in her nature to do so. How could she possibly mother the whole village when she herself was still a child? So she ran, leaving behind a city she had constructed and a note for her brother, father, and grandmother. She spent a few months in the Northern Water Tribe learning complicated healing techniques from Yugoda, but she tired of the remarks about her rumored relationship with the Avatar and her age that was perfect for marriage. Again, she escaped in the dead of night, heading for her distant relatives in the Swamp Tribe. It was during her stay here that the nightmares began, forcing her to watch her parents, her brother, her closest friends be burned or bleed to death. The last two scenes she saw every night were Zuko being struck by the lightning that was meant for her and then her, a master waterbender, drowning in pitch-black water. Even in her waking hours, those visions followed her around in the magical plants. She stayed in the Swamp for 8 months before the apparitions of her mother and friends became overwhelming, and she was forced to say goodbye to Hue, who had taught her the intricacies of plant-bending.

On the two-year anniversary of the day Fire Lord Ozai was defeated, she found herself in Appa's saddle, traveling with her best friend once again. But the Air Nomads' lifestyle was not for her - she couldn't hop from town to town without wondering what happened to the child she had helped deliver or the crippled grandfather that she had healed. Moreover, she found that she could not continue in a relationship with Aang. She never knew if he was going to be the carefree boy from the iceberg who easily dismissed every issue, or the overburdened Avatar who would lash out at her when things got too hard. Aang wanted her to support his every decision, to put him before anything, to always have the answer, to be his emotional crutch. And she was used to doing all those things, but it just felt so wrong. She was losing her identity, slowly fading into someone who was just tagging along as the Avatar's girlfriend, rather than a master waterbender and war hero in her own right. She held no real power, and bar healing people, she couldn't make any real difference, which frustrated her to no end. From all of Aang's declarations of her being his "forever girl", she knew she had to nip this in the bud before she spent the rest of her life in a manner she would inevitably regret. And so, when Appa landed in Gaoling for a visit to Toph, Katara broke the heart of the world's savior and walked away from the boy and his bison with tears in her eyes and a resolve in her soul to finish what she started three years ago - she would find her own way in this world.

Now 17, a girl who could part the ocean was surrounded by firm earthen walls and stubborn people who were hesitant to leave behind prejudices and their ideas of propriety. Katara traveled from Gaoling to Ba Sing Se to Omashu, all the while garnering attention as a sort of mental doctor. Of course, she would still heal physical injuries, but after helping to rehabilitate some Joo Dees of Ba Sing Se, she realized that her healing techniques could go even further. She listened to people's problems, offered solutions if they needed them, cried with distraught parents and children, helped ease mental turmoil, counseled couples, families, and soldiers, and helped people who had repressed painful memories. It let her help so many people, it made her feel needed, and on a deeper level, it let her ignore her own problems. Seeing the pain of others reminded her that they had it a lot worse - no matter how hypocritical that was, as she often told her patients to not compare their hurt with that of those around them.

Katara felt that she had finally found her calling, but snide remarks from Earth Kingdom inhabitants about her savagery and tribal mannerisms reminded her that she would not find a home here either. She found her way to Kyoshi Island a few months after she turned 18, and found out that while she had been gone, Sokka had proposed to Suki. She remembered the breathtaking pain she had felt when she realized that life had gone on without her, her friends had continued their trajectories without her, and they didn't even need her. They didn't even want her - after all, she had not received a single letter in the past three years, not from anyone. That epiphany still winded her tonight, as she stood on this dark balcony alone. After spending a few months with the Kyoshi Warriors, she had escaped the pitiful and knowing gaze of Suki, with the darkness as her only companion, and had trekked along the edges of the Fire Nation.

After a while, she ended up here in Ming Ha, a coastal province of the Fire Nation. She had rented out this small apartment above a library, where she spent all her free time. Although Ming Ha wasn't a bustling city, the Hundred Years' War had taken its toll on every single person who wore red and gold, meaning that Katara had no dearth of patients in the three months she had been here. However, this nation whispered about her with both awe and fear because she had saved their beloved Fire Lord and that commanded some respect; but in doing so, she had defeated the greatest firebender in recent history. Those whispers served as a caustic warning - _you will not find your home here eithe_ r.

As the sun started to rise in the east, Katara realized with a jolt that she had gotten lost in her memories yet again. She could hear her "doctor" voice - which sounded like a strange mix of Uncle Iroh and Gran-Gran's voices - in her head, reminding her that you can't move forward if you spend too much time in the past. She took in one last deep breath, allowing the ocean to pervade her senses. All these years, she may not have had letters from her friends or any lasting traveling companions, but she always had the ocean and the darkness. Tui and La. They were constant, they were always by her side, and so now, they were her home.

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Feel free to review/criticize - I'm here to improve as a writer!


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